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Last week I turned 44 and I got to celebrate this in ceremony, being held in a sacred space, in community, being welcomed into the world through song, water, touch, presence, deep love and care. It was one of the most beautiful and vulnerable things I ever experienced and every time thinking about it my heart is swelling and my eyes are full of tears. I have been holding space and spaces in various ways for a long time. Party that is by choice - it is my work and craft in this world that I treat as sacred, love deeply, and continue to grow in. And partly by the default expectations stemming from being socialized as a woman in a patriarchal world and from tough family stories which have required from me to hold space for others since childhood. Some months ago I had an epiphany that one of my deepest longings is to experience in a substantial way how it feels to be held, how it feels deep in the cells to be safe and cared for and welcomed in this world. I shared this revelation with a beloved friend of mine and she said “why don't we make it happen on your birthday?". This friend also happens to be one of the wise ones - one who is in communion with the sacred waters and wells, one who sings with the owls and dances with moons, one who carries in her bone the knowing of what it means to weave a sacred space. And so she gave me the most precious gift - holding this space for me. On my birthday, in a large community of other beloveds I was held and rocked and sung lullabies to, and embraced by water…… and I cried rivers, it felt like some stones coming loose at a well deep inside, letting the waters out. In the process of reflecting on this, I have been thinking a lot about Francis Weller's writings. In “The Wild Edge of Sorrow” he writes that as we are born, and as we pass through childhood, adolescence, the stages of adulthood, we are designed to anticipate a certain quality of welcome, engagement, touch, and reflection. That we are designed to expect what our deep-time ancestors experienced as their birthright: the container of the village. I did not know how much I myself had been longing for that container until I was inside it. Until I felt the arms, heard the songs, received the water, and something in me that had been holding its breath for decades, finally exhaled. Weller also writes that we require touch in body and soul to feel that we matter. Quite literally - that we have matter and substance, that we take up space in the world. I am 44 and I am still learning to take up space. And I feel that something in that room and community gave me the permission I didn't know I needed. It also made it clear for me how important it is to create these “circles of welcome in our lives - as ongoing practice, so we can keep leaning into the world, keep moving grief through our psyches and bodies, so we can taste the sweetness of life. So we can, in turn, offer our caring hearts to others in times of sorrow and pain”. This is what I want to keep building and tending - the spaces and conditions in which we can all be held. And I feel so grateful to co-weave one such space - the House for Homeless Grief very soon.
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